After being hidden away for nearly 70 years and then auctioned twice, the original manuscript by AA co-founder Bill Wilson is about to become public for the first time next week, complete with edits by Wilson-picked commenters that reveal a profound debate in 1939 about how overtly to talk about God. The group’s decision to use “higher power” and “God of your understanding” instead of “God” or “Jesus Christ” and to adopt a more inclusive tone was enormously important in making the deeply spiritual text accessible to the non-religious and non-Christian, AA historians and treatment experts say.

But the crossed-out phrases and scribbles make clear that the words easily could have read differently. And the edits embody a debate that continues today: How should the role of spirituality and religion be handled in addiction treatment? They also take readers back to an era when churches and society generally stigmatized alcohol addicts as immoral rather than ill. The AA movement’s reframing of addiction as having a physical component (the “doctor’s opinion” that opens the book calls it “a kind of allergy”) was revolutionary, experts say.

“We didn’t have any knowledge then about the brain. Today we know there is a neurological component, we know there are spiritual, psychological and environmental components,” said Joseph Califano, founder of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

Despite objections from some secularists, experts generally believe that “there is a significant spiritual component for the overwhelming majority of people” coming out of addiction to alcohol and drugs, Califano said. The question was – and is – in what way? The notes in the margins of the manuscript make clear there was disagreement, and even Wilson was torn.

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What's really interesting to me about the manuscript – and about the article in the WaPo – is the excising of the word "you" in favor of the word "we." This, for me, is the real import of what happened in those edits – and what's amazing is that the article seems not to notice this at all, preferring to talk about religion or not!

There's a wonderful pamphlet published by A.A. General Services called "A Member's-Eye View of A.A." (This can be found in PDF form online.)

Here's a quote from that pamphlet:

"Long before there was a definition of A.A., before there was a book or Steps or Traditions or a program of recovery, there was a night in Akron, Ohio, only a short 33 years ago. (1935). A night when a man named Bill W., alone in a strange city, shaken and frightened, concluded that his only hope of maintaining his present hard-won sobriety was to talk to and try to help another alcoholic. So far as I know, that is the first recorded instance where one alcoholic consciously and deliberately turned to another alcoholic, not to drink with, but to stay sober with.

In the fateful meeting of Bill W. and Doctor Bob the next evening, was an answer finally given to that rhetorical question which Christ asked two thousand years ago? "If the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the pit?" And in 1935 was the answer, strangely enough, "No"? But perhaps what occurred that evening was not a contradiction of Christ's maxim. Perhaps one who was a little less blind, one who was at last able to discern vague shapes and forms, described what he saw to one who still lived in total darkness.

Much more important than what was said that evening was who was saying it. Long before the average alcoholic walks through the doors of his first A.A. meeting, he has sought help from others or help has been offered to him, in some instances even forced upon him. But these helpers are always superior beings: spouses, parents, physicians, employers, priests, ministers, rabbis, swamis, judges, policemen, even bartenders. The moral culpability of the alcoholic and the moral superiority of the helper, even though unstated, are always clearly understood. The overtone of parental disapproval and discipline in these authority figures is always present. For the first time, 33 years ago an alcoholic suddenly heard a different drummer. Instead of the constant and menacing rat-a-tat-tat of "This is what you should do," he heard an instantly recognizable voice saying, "This is what I did."

I am personally convinced that the basic search of every human being, from the cradle to the grave, is to find at least one other human being before whom he can stand completely naked, stripped of all pretense or defense, and trust that person not to hurt him, because that other person has stripped himself naked, too. This lifelong search can begin to end with the first A.A. encounter."

And the writer of this pamphlet seems to have gotten that exactly right – even though it's unlikely he ever saw the manuscript itself…..

The most important part of this so-called "Original Manuscript" is not the publisher remarks. It is the clear and convincing proof that the compromised language which deleted God from the Steps and which contained a questionable attribution to Ebby of the idea that you could choose your own conception of a god explains lots to Christian in the recovery arena today. See The Dick B. Christian Recovery Guide, 3rd ed., 2010 http://www.dickb.com/Christian-Recov-Guide.shtml. In the manuscript, Bill had unqualifiedly referred to Almighty God. The minor changes were openly made to appease atheists (of whom there were few). The 400 references to Almighty God–Creator, Maker, Father, Heavenly Father, Spirit, Father of Lights; plus the capitalized word "God"; and the references to Almighty God with capitalized pronouns "Him," "His" etc.

In summary, Bill capitulated to his partner Henry Parkhurst in order to sell books. Bill did not capitulate on his own belief that the answer in A.A. had been, was, and still is: "There is One who has all power. That One is God" and "that God could and would if He were sought.

The new manuscript is valuable, but it discloses nothing that Christian AAs don't hear in meetings all the time–the hogwash that A.A. is "spiritual, but not religious;" that a "higher power" can be a light bulb, radiator, Santa Claus, a chair, Somebody, and "It." Also that AAs themselves are not foolish enough to pray to a chair, a light bulb, or Santa Claus. They hear the nonsense. Some repeat it. But they don't persuade the tens of thousands of Christians in Alcoholics Anonymous today that they have no place in Alcoholics Anonymous and that they cannot believe in and mention God Almighty, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Bible. That's their right!See International Christian Recovery Coalition website athttp://www.ChristianRecoveryCoalition.com

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